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I was wondering why anyone would seek out a psychiatrist for a baseball article. As it turns out, Welsing believes (per wikipedia) that "white people are the genetically defective descendants of albino mutants."

According to Welsing, various cultural practices express white people's sense of their own inferiority:

On both St. Valentine's Day and Mother's Day, the white male gives gifts of chocolate candy with nuts…. If his sweetheart ingests "chocolate with nuts", the white male can fantasize that he is genetically equal to the Black male

On both St. Valentine's Day and Mother's Day, the white male gives gifts of chocolate candy with nuts…. If his sweetheart ingests "chocolate with nuts", the white male can fantasize that he is genetically equal to the Black male

“What would you imagine would be the result if the so-called Negro Leagues had been allowed to continue? Who would you imagine would dominate?” Dr. Welsing said.

Expecting another puff piece my eyes were glazing over until I got to this paragraph. Other things would come into play, but I'm guessing African-Americans who make up 7% of MLB today, enough for 2 teams, might not be dominating the majors. Someone more interested might want to list those players by ERA+ and OPS+.

#14 - The Negro Leagues would still include any dark-skinned Latinos, which would even the numbers out significantly. I think in that case, the two leagues would be competitive with each other, if not equal.

On both St. Valentine's Day and Mother's Day, the white male gives gifts of chocolate candy with nuts…. If his sweetheart ingests "chocolate with nuts", the white male can fantasize that he is genetically equal to the Black male

#14 - The Negro Leagues would still include any dark-skinned Latinos, which would even the numbers out significantly. I think in that case, the two leagues would be competitive with each other, if not equal.

All the same, I'm hoping this thread does not go the route of "thought experiment where we segregate the league on paper" in order to find out, if only to avoid the discussion about "what X player counts as"

If you've never encountered Dr. Frances Cress Welsing before, consider yourself lucky and pour yourself a drink. She's the mirror image of every crackpot white supremacist who's ever walked the Earth, and she's been running on along these lines since before most of you were born.

From the Wikipedia article on Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, this is to funny not to post.

Is it not also curious that when white males are young and vigorous, they attempt to master the large brown balls, but as they become older and wiser, they psychologically resign themselves to their inability to master the large brown balls? Their focus then shifts masochistically to hitting the tiny white golf balls in disgust and resignation — in full final realization of white genetic recessiveness.[5]

the negro leagues were not as good as the al/nl, though they were reasonably close. i would say they were about the level of the ua, aa, pl compared to the nl. the pl i think would be the best comparison because it was top-heavy, like the negro leagues.

also, i'm pretty sure there's no study verifying that african-genomed male genitalia is even larger than eurasian-genomed male genitalia. they can't even agree on the general averages, it's not like they go around studying genital size all the time.

psychology is like codified prejudice to me, i dismiss pretty much everything i hear from any psychologist out of hand, except for the very structured basic stuff like electric impulse response, etc. but the academic standards for non-lab psych are just pathetic, you can just talk out of your ass and market it. never trust a scientific study from a popular publication. that means it failed the academic journal.

If you've never encountered Dr. Frances Cress Welsing before, consider yourself lucky and pour yourself a drink. She's the mirror image of every crackpot white supremacist who's ever walked the Earth, and she's been running on along these lines since before most of you were born.

Damn fine advice.

Well, she's never been nominated for vice president, so she's never quite gotten the publicity that she deserves. But if you become familiar with the 40+ year history of her truly bizarre rantings, you'll find her career value on the Humor Scale to be truly Palinesque.

Is it not also curious that when white males are young and vigorous, they attempt to master the large brown balls, but as they become older and wiser, they psychologically resign themselves to their inability to master the large brown balls? Their focus then shifts masochistically to hitting the tiny white golf balls in disgust and resignation — in full final realization of white genetic recessiveness.[5]

The popularity of the orange balls must have really ###### with her mindview.

Is it not also curious that when white males are young and vigorous, they attempt to master the large brown balls, but as they become older and wiser, they psychologically resign themselves to their inability to master the large brown balls? Their focus then shifts masochistically to hitting the tiny white golf balls in disgust and resignation — in full final realization of white genetic recessiveness.[5]

I've heard of some cutting edge studies relating certain cranial measurements typical of the various races and their characteristic behavioral patterns that this author may find fascinating.

Actually I can't stand that game. and haven't played it since 1964 when I didn't know better. Too much ducking and dodging and not enough trying to pocket balls. When it comes to pool I'm strictly a yellow striped ball man. 8 ball is for cowards.

#14 - The Negro Leagues would still include any dark-skinned Latinos, which would even the numbers out significantly. I think in that case, the two leagues would be competitive with each other, if not equal.

If we're going with Welsing's totally idiotic, ridiculously unaware counterfactual here, if we accept the premise that the NeL were ever able to get their #### together and become an organized and stable league, with quality representatives throughout the Northeast and Midwest, and with a player pool strong enough to intimidate an MLB still following the "gentlemen's agreement" TO THIS DAY, this assumes that the still much wealthier and crazily exploitative MLB wouldn't have tried to soak every player out of Europe, Canada, and Australia that they could to fill up the white ranks, when they would have had exponentially more motivation to do so than they ever have had in reality.

Based on the comments here, Welsing sounds like Ayn Rand trying to write academic papers.

The last info I have heard on the white/black skin color thing was from one of the endless History Channel stations, or maybe National Geographic. The idea - apparently backed by genetic analysis - is that the further north your population is, the less melanin you need in your skin to offset the effects of the number of hours that the sun shines in the year. So you have blacks near the equator, lighter brown skin along the Mediterranean, and blonds in Sweden. The show also claimed that the amount of time it would take the descendants of a black person who moved to Sweden to become white-skinned blonds is about 10,000 years. Also, the claim was that northern white people have smaller FLACCID male members because of the need to keep as little skin as possible exposed to the cold. Erect, there appears to be no difference, at least according to the TV show. I, personally, am unqualified to judge this kind of research, so I have no idea whether any of this is true. - Brock Hanke

Welsing has been criticized for stating that black male homosexuality was imposed on the black man by the white man in order to reduce the black population,

Dr. Welsing is an absolute lunatic...but still oddly fascinating. I've never come across anyone crazy enough to say this.

Then you must never have listened to many talk shows on black-oriented radio stations. Here's a hot tip: Hannity, Savage and Limbaugh don't hold exclusive patents on paranoid-driven insanity, and there are plenty of dittoheads on some of those shows who don't lack for melanin.

Seriously, Welsing's a total crackpot, but she's just as much a product of her time and place (she's 78) as someone like Jesse Helms or Strom Thurmond, though fortunately for the world her views have been far less influential on policy. There are always going to be crazy people coming out of every culture, and she just happens to be one you've never heard of before yesterday. So enjoy.

My cousin, just as black as I am, is a crackpot, too. He lives with my uncle and is refusing to go to law school (or some other grad school) because he doesn't want to "learn the white man's law." (Of course there are plenty of reasons not to go to law school, but that's besides the point.) I try to play devil's advocate (ha) sometimes and say, "Perhaps you want to learn it so as better to dismantle it!!!" I'm not agreeing with his lunacy, mind you, but trying to push him to do something besides smoke weed all day long. But mostly I just don't talk to him except when I have to go down there for Thanksgiving. We used to be very close, too, since we're the same age.

I'm glad he's not on facebook anymore, because I'm sure he would have been Alex Jonesing all over himself this week and I didn't have any desire to see that.

I've seen Welsing interviewed a couple of times. I think Tony Brown had her on his show. What was even more scary was that Brown seemed to be listening in agreement, saying stuff like "Yes, isn't that interesting?" or "It all makes sense, doesn't it?"? or something along those lines.

Edit: Dammit, someone had put up a series of Youtube videos of a Tony Brown show of Welsing debating William Shockley at Clark University in Atlanta but they all seem to be deleted. That exchange must have been unbelievable.

I've seen Welsing interviewed a couple of times. I think Tony Brown had her on his show. What was even more scary was that Brown seemed to be listening in agreement, saying stuff like "Yes, isn't that interesting?" or "It all makes sense, doesn't it?"? or something along those lines.

I knew a Welsing acolyte in college, a girl who I was helping with some political stuff until I got to know her better (she had other issues too) - at which point I was like 'why exactly do you want the help of one of your inferiors?'

I don't know much about him, actually. My mom used to watch him and in the few times I happened to catch him he seemed like a black Charlie Rose to me. Anyway, I just watched some of Dr. Welsing on youtube and, you know, she says just enough sensible things to couch around the crazy. I can see why she has an appeal to some people.

It's reasonable to mourn the loss of the Negro Leagues with their accompanying jobs and businesses. Ideally, perhaps, they could have tried to merge several teams into the big leagues. But I'm guessing that the existing major league team had too much money for the Negro Leagues to compete with for talent. Desegregation didn't happen according to a neatly laid out plan and the ancillary personnel of the Negro Leagues were some of the (short term) losers.

The New York Times
The Smaller the Ball, the Better the Book: A Game Theory of Literature

Date: May 31, 1992, Sunday, Late Edition
Final Byline: By George Plimpton;

SOME years ago I evolved what I called the Small Ball Theory to assess the quality of literature about sports. This stated that there seems to be a correlation between the standard of writing about a particular sport and the ball it utilizes -- that the smaller the ball, the more formidable the literature. There are superb books about golf, very good books about baseball, not many good books about football or soccer, very few good books about basketball and no good books at all about beach balls. I capped off the Small Ball Theory by citing Mark Twain's "Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," perhaps the most universally known of sports stories, in which bird shot (very small balls indeed!) is an important element in the plot.

This is a variant of the Nation of Islam's racial theory. It's pretty batshit

Yep, Yacub the evil scientist making the white man in a laboratory. Muhammad Ali used to talk about this in all seriousness. I still have an interview he did with Playboy on the topic from the early-70s. I bought it for the interview, honest!

Yeah, but I give a pass for a lot of that talk from that period in time. I've read a Malcolm X interview he gave Playboy from the same time period and he says a lot of dumb stuff like that, too. I think they were groping for a vocabulary to express their anger but also for a way to be not be the "other" anymore and it came out in weird ways. Also, in fairness to them, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies gave them a lot of reason to be angry and paranoid.

Man, I saw that once and it is on the list for the grossest thing I've ever encountered. Just about got myself stabbed trying to leave, too, until they figured out I'd left money for the drinks at the table.

also, i'm pretty sure there's no study verifying that african-genomed male genitalia is even larger than eurasian-genomed male genitalia. they can't even agree on the general averages, it's not like they go around studying genital size all the time.

As I've been saying for years, we desperately need more female and gay male scientists.

The last info I have heard on the white/black skin color thing was from one of the endless History Channel stations, or maybe National Geographic. The idea - apparently backed by genetic analysis - is that the further north your population is, the less melanin you need in your skin to offset the effects of the number of hours that the sun shines in the year. So you have blacks near the equator, lighter brown skin along the Mediterranean, and blonds in Sweden.

FWIW, my understanding is that this is half of the generally accepted idea. The other half is that lighter skin allows you to produce more vitamin D, which is done when one absorbs sunlight through the skin. In Europe, which is both very far north (Rome is slightly north of New York City) and often quite foggy and cloudy, it's a big deal. See the traditional British problem with rickets, which is mostly caused by vitamin D deficiency. Further towards the equator your problem is skin cancer and so forth, so more melanin is a good thing.

This explanation is pretty convincing as a basic framework, but probably still somewhat imperfect -- there isn't a clean gradation of skin tones from the equator to the arctic, and people at the same latitudes in different parts of the world can have very different skin tones and hair types. Evolution is complex.

(Blue eyes are a related and relatively recent mutation. It probably got passed on because light blue eyes absorb more light, and allow slightly better low light vision in places like like Scandinavia and the British Isles that are dimly lit a good amount of the time. The tradeoff is a problem with glare. This is of course a disadvantage for a baseball player in day games.)

The show also claimed that the amount of time it would take the descendants of a black person who moved to Sweden to become white-skinned blonds is about 10,000 years.

Well, physical evolutionary pressures are nothing like they once were. You can drink vitamin D milk and get a sun lamp and vacation in Ibiza, something that cave men had a hard time pulling off.

Maybe I don't get evolution, but I don't see how something like blue eyes would spread via natural selection. Sure, nice to have if you live up north, I guess, but not a major procreative advantage. The blue eyed dude isn't going to spread more seed just because he has fractionally better eyesight in the winter.

Maybe I don't get evolution, but I don't see how something like blue eyes would spread via natural selection. Sure, nice to have if you live up north, I guess, but not a major procreative advantage. The blue eyed dude isn't going to spread more seed just because he has fractionally better eyesight in the winter.

It doesn't have to be a procreative advantage if it's a survival advantage (i.e., maybe you see the winter predator a hair before the brown-eyed caveman next to you does). If blue eyes help you survive a bit better, then you're more likely to have kids, whether the ladies like the eye color or not.

EDIT: Redacted for math errors. My general point is that tiny advantages can have huge repercussions over long spans of time.

“What would you imagine would be the result if the so-called Negro Leagues had been allowed to continue? Who would you imagine would dominate?” Dr. Welsing said.

Really depends on how many teams you had. Add 12 teams to the existing 16 MLB teams, and the statistical analysis I've seen suggests the MLB teams were a bit better. Consolidate them to 4, or maybe 6 teams, and the NLB teams would be better. I know NLB allstar teams generally beat the white allstar teams, and what that says about the quality of the star players. But the white teams just have a much larger talent pool to draw from.

If adding a set number of NLB teams to MLB was the way integration was handled, they wouldn't stay as black or white teams for long. Sure, the reserve clause prevented player movement, but at some point, assuming the initial change works and the teams become used to playing each other regularly, there would be trades. Stan Musial for Josh Gibson? Then you'd have marginal players trying to catch on. A utility infielder is cut from one black team, the others don't want to sign him. Say a white team has an open spot. Why can't they sign him?

Willie Mays comes along a few years after integration. Seems perfectly reasonable that some of the white teams would offer more money than the black teams could. And once you've accepted playing against players of different skin color in league games, and the idea that black players were inferior (hard to fathom now, but pre-integration that was not an uncommon belief) was utterly disproven, it's hard to see how an restriction on black players playing with white teammates could hold.

This explanation is pretty convincing as a basic framework, but probably still somewhat imperfect -- there isn't a clean gradation of skin tones from the equator to the arctic, and people at the same latitudes in different parts of the world can have very different skin tones and hair types. Evolution is complex.

This is actually not true. There is a guy in my dept. who works on this, Greg Barsh. See: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC212702/ (graph is also in wikipedia). There IS a very clean gradient of skin reflectance as a function of latitude.

As for blue eyes - not all individual phenotypes are subject to very strong selection. Most mutations are neutral and can be carried next to selected ones simply because they are proximal on a DNA strand and the population hasn't had time to equilibrate.

It never occurred to me at the time (hey, I was just a kid!) that the vast majority of players I liked in the NL were people of color and that all my favorite players in the AL were white guys. In fact, these were pretty much a big part of the All Star teams for several years and, as we know looking back, for pretty much most of the '60s and all of the '70s, the NL was winning the All Star game every year. Of course, this probably had more to do with the American League's delays at jumping on the integration bandwagon than anything else, I would imagine.